More and more call center jobs are headed for foreign shores these days, analysts say. But could an emerging staffing alternative - and technologies to match - keep a percentage of those around here?

According to new research from Datamonitor, U.S. call center outsourcers are losing their share of the global market. Last year 37% of the world's outsourced contact center positions were in the U.S. By 2008, Datamonitor expects that number to shrink to 25%. Nine out of ten jobs lost in the U.S. contact center outsourcing industry will be outbound telemarketing jobs, the research firm says.

But there is an alternative that could stem the tide. Well, maybe not stem the tide, exactly, but potentially reverse a trickle or so of it.

The alternative is the virtual call center, which forgoes the traditional call center facility in favor of agents working from home. It's not a new concept, but one that is gaining more attention lately.

Research firm IDC reports there are 100,000 home-based agents in the U.S. today. Granted, that's still just a fraction of the 4 million agents working in brick-and-mortar call centers. But some well-known companies have adopted the virtual model, either whole-hog or in part. Those include JetBlue Airlines, Office Depot and 1-800 FLOWERS.

Pioneering virtual call center outsourcers include Alpine Access, Willow CSN and Working Solutions. In addition, some traditional call center outsourcers, such as Aspect and West, have been supplementing their ranks with more and more at-home agent staff.

One reason is economics: IDC's research says an employee in a traditional call center costs a company $31 per hour in expenses, compared to $21 per employee, per hour, for virtual agents.

For companies that might be considering migrating to a virtual call center model, there are plenty of technologies available to help with the transition. Two recent announcements caught my eye - the new products seem tailor-made for a virtual setting.

One is from Nortel, which recently unveiled a software bundle designed to let companies use employees who aren't sitting in a physical contact center to take calls.

Even the name of the new Nortel initiative - Expert Anywhere - screams home workers. But it's not limited to home workers, of course. Expert Anywhere lets companies direct customer calls to employees whether they're sitting in a call center, branch office, retail store or home office. The idea is that employees located outside the call center facility can help handle calls when volume is heavy or step in when their expertise is needed for a specific customer inquiry.